In my childhood we had a coal fire in each living room. I was intrigued by the perfect blackness, and sheer beauty, of the shiny black crumbly cubes of coal. Its process from living fronds to fuel or useful chemicals is a great example of the cycle of existence, and that one stage has to be surrendered for the next to happen.

For another poem about coal, look below at the WHITE RAINBOW.

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

What is as black as coal? Such total darkness,
Yet shining with rainbow sheen, as if in mockery;
Hard, yet brittle; jagged, crumbling squareness;
Useless for stone or bricks; faint-hearted trickery.

The beautiful forests of giant waving ferns,
Feet in the sultry swamp, fronds in the sky;
Heat from the brave young sun, and showers, by turns;
Energy factory, towering high.

The sun grew shrouded, that summoned them high:
Felled and fallen, those waving, whispering fronds;
Feeble and shrivelled under the darkening sky,
Choked and stifled in the silted ponds.

Pressured in fold on fold of black despair;
Helpless captives, squeezed of freedom and grace,
Those glorious giants that swept the air!
Bowed and broken, in confined space.

Suffocating! Helpless! Trapped in the dark!
What is essential? What must be retained?
Power being compacted: fuel for the spark.
Let all the rest go, as the ooze is drained.

Guarding the essence, while continents sank or rose;
Compressed into layers, while strata wrinkled and split;
The heave of earth’s processes: birthing that shows
In value transformed, fossil energy stored, to be lit:

That black heart fired a revolution;
Powered the world for progress, speed and labour,
Travel, inventions: ideas to find the solution
To plague and famine; dyes, medicines; help our neighbour.

Now the black-hearted beauty fades into history.
Our thoughts are filled with fronds that waved in the sun.
Well-studied fossils reveal their palaeo-mystery:
The living world of giants whose work is done.